


Locomotive Breath

by Poetic_Programmer



Category: RWBY
Genre: AU, Action, Alternate Universe, Angst, Canon Divergence, Eventual Relationships, F/F, Gen, Trains, Violence, more to be added - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 07:43:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15577104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetic_Programmer/pseuds/Poetic_Programmer
Summary: Ever since the fateful day years ago when that fearsome grimm in the north awoke and spewed its toxic breath, which the world came to call miasma, most people couldn’t survive for long in an environment where the air wasn’t filtered. Some hunters and huntresses who had more exposure to the grimm, however, could tolerate it for as long as a few hours. Team RWBY was one such group of huntresses. As such, after their graduation, like many others who had resistance to the miasma, team RWBY took on the task of protecting those who did not, on the railways, the largest form of remaining transportation in the world.





	Locomotive Breath

**Author's Note:**

> I’m still new to this whole writing thing, so feedback is appreciated. I think my weakest point is dialogue.
> 
> Essentially this is the pilot for this idea I’ve got spinning in my head. If I continue to develop this, there will obviously be more character oriented-story and plot movement. I just wanted to try it out, and it turned out to be pretty fun to write regardless of how it turned out.
> 
> Lots of room for world building and interesting character situations, so I think I'll probably end up continuing it.

_Being a railway mercenary isn’t that bad a gig,_ Yang thought to herself.

She leaned back in the posh cushions of the passenger cabin of the train she was aboard. The leather exterior she sat on gripped against the skin on her legs, but the back was soft and invited her to sink in further. The cabin was, quite honestly, huge. There was room for both of the ornate couches on the window side, and two sets of bunk beds. The walls were adorned with red and gold striped wallpaper which helped the room’s comfortable atmosphere.

The wide window to the outside held a pristine view. The lush, or rather, overgrown and wild grasslands was a sight for sore eyes after spending weeks in the city between jobs. The flat landscape seemed like it stretched on forever, only a few hills blocking the horizon.The grass by the tracks was fiercely blown aside as the train rushed past.

Her teammates, Ruby, Weiss, and Blake, occupied the other corners of the cabin. They went about their own ways of killing off their idle time. Blake lazed on one of the beds, flipping nonchalantly through the pages of a hardcover novel, half open eyes flickering across the pages. Yang appreciated how at peace Blake could look at times like this, the morning sunlight glistening off her eyes. Weiss, with her arms crossed, gazed out the window. Yang couldn’t blame her, the countryside could be taken in forever. Plus, she looked like she had a lot on her mind.

Ruby was obviously restless. Sometimes, she would make comments to the others about the duration of the trip. In fact, she wasn’t very good at leaving the others alone to their thoughts. When she wasn’t finding things to say to the others, she would sometimes nap for twenty minutes at a time, or she would leave the cabin to walk down the aisles of the train, or she would take out her whetstone to put an edge on crescent rose.

In this particular moment, she had opted to sharpen her blade. Her slow, careful strides of the stone against the blade fell in time with the rhythm of the wheels on the train, every handful of chugging sounds produced by the wheel matching up to a take on the stone. Abruptly, Ruby set her tools aside and stood.

“I’m going to take a walk.” She said plainly. Nobody responded, as this was the third time in the last two hours she’d taken a walk. She slid open the cabin door, stepped out, and shut it quietly behind her.

A moment of quiet passed, and then Weiss stood.

“I’m going to eat something.” Weiss said, standing slowly to take the same route down the hall as Ruby had a moment ago. Yang and Blake exchanged looks of playful suspicion.

 

Weiss hadn’t seen where Ruby had gone, but she had a decent guess. She stepped down the hall through several cars to the cabin which had the train’s luxury buffet.

And, sure enough, the girl in red stuck out like a sore thumb there, meandering between the various plates and snatching bits to eat. The food was served on ornately decorated silver platters, and the tablecloths were intricately woven. Ruby’s signature dress, with its red and black coloring and ergonomic lacing, was a stark contrast to the formalwear the other passengers on this train adorned.

Weiss looked at the clock on the wall. It read two in the afternoon. It wasn’t exactly lunch hour, but there were still a couple of higher-class individuals around to shoot strange looks at Ruby. Weiss sighed. _Maybe it’ll be better if I get her to eat a real meal instead of snacks,_ she thought. Weiss approached behind Ruby and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Care to eat with me?” She asked, catching the girl with a mouthful of sweets. Startled, Ruby could only nod.

 

Moments later, Ruby and Weiss were seated across from each other at one of the tables. Ruby had a wide assortment of food on her plate, the amalgamation of probably twenty dishes forming a heap. Weiss had just settled on some pasta salad. She looked forward at Ruby, who had already started digging in blissfully.

“So,” Weiss began, “How are you feeling, Ruby?” Ruby looked up at Weiss.

“I’m feeling alright, why do you ask?” Ruby replied generically. Weiss leaned back a little in her chair.

“Come on. You’ve barely been able to sit down.” Weiss knew that Ruby wasn’t exactly known for being the kind to sit around all day, but even this was unusual.

“Well, I…” Ruby started a reply which trailed off. She raised her fork again as she thought, picking around her food a bit. Weiss looked expectantly at Ruby, trying to make sure she doesn’t dodge around the question. Ruby set her fork down, and looked around before continuing her thoughts.

“I dunno. This new line of work for us has been… different.” Ruby started.

“Well, yes.” Weiss responded directly. “We certainly have a lot less uptime.”

“When I signed up to be a huntress, this isn’t quite what I had in mind,” Ruby responded as she began to raise her voice. “All we’re doing is protecting shipments. I wanted to go out and help people!” Ruby burst, her voice raising a little bit too loud for the setting. Weiss let Ruby regain her composure as she collected her thoughts for a moment.

“I know what you mean. I feel the same way, that we’re not really doing anything important or heroic,” Weiss said. “...But, unfortunately, even huntresses have to eat.”

Both of them decided to not pursue it any further. They continued to eat in silence. Weiss, having taken an order of magnitude less food than Ruby, finished well before her. She dismissed herself to return to the cabin where the team was resting.

 

Yang was zoning out, gazing out the window at the landscape, with the only interruption to her thoughts being the sliding of the door announcing Weiss’s return. Yang turned to look at her, and saw a slightly troubled expression on her face. _Poor girl must be having Ruby problems,_ Yang thought. She decided against prying into the matter, and opted to look back out to the window again.

The grimm in this region seemed mostly small, and couldn’t keep up with the train. Any beast which tried to approach the wheels was scared off by the roaring of the iron running on iron. Any bird stupid enough to try to touch the cars would be knocked aside by its swift motion. _I don’t think they really even needed us here, but I’ll take the pay,_ Yang thought to herself.

Although, with cargo like this, she supposed the Schnee corporation couldn’t be too safe. The train carried two things that would be devastating to lose: a hoard of dust, and rich people. In fact, the only explanation for the train only hiring one team of mercenaries is that it has high-grade armor. You wouldn’t tell from the inside, but several inches of plating ensured that the outside air did not reach the luxury cars of the passengers, where they merrily sipped their wine and laughed about their politics, forgetting that they’re a few feet away from a harsh environment they couldn’t survive a few minutes in.

Yang planted her elbow back on the window sill, her head resting in her palm. This time, though, she realized she felt something. Something which felt off, different from a moment ago. She felt something in the wood. Aside from the vibrations produced by the movement of the train, another rumbling was taking form, and growing quickly in intensity. Yang Jolted out of her seat, priming her gauntlets.

“Get up! Something’s coming!” Yang bellowed at the other two in the cabin. They were bewildered, but the ringing of the alarm bell placed by their cabin entry told them what they needed to know. Blake tossed her book aside, her and Weiss grabbing their weapons before rushing out of their room behind Yang. They bolted down their hall to the left, pushing aside a couple of passengers who were panicking at the sound of the bell. There was a hatch on the ceiling that Yang placed her hands on the valve of.

“Masks?!” Weiss shouted before Yang was able to throw the hatch open.

“No time”, Yang responded, “We can take care of it quickly enough anyway.” With this, she threw open the hatch, the deadly air of the outside world flooding in and her dashing out.

Now that the hatch was open, Weiss had no choice. they had get out as quickly as possible to prevent the air from flowing in too much. She cursed Yang’s hastiness under her breath as she followed Blake, using the handles in the base of the open hatchway to pull herself out.

She climbed her way onto the roof of the train on her knees, one of her team members shutting the hatch behind her. Standing up and brushing her skirt off, she took in a breath of the outside air. As usual, it was harsh, and burned her throat as if it was the air on an ice-cold morning, even though the sun beat down on them in this moderate weather.

 

Ever since the fateful day years ago when that fearsome grimm in the north awoke and spewed its toxic breath, which the world came to call miasma, most people couldn’t survive for long in an environment where the air wasn’t filtered. Some hunters and huntresses who had more exposure to the grimm, however, could tolerate it for as long as a few hours. Team RWBY was one such group of huntresses. As such, after their graduation, like many others who had resistance to the miasma, they took on the task of protecting those who did not, on the railways, the largest form of remaining transportation in the world.

 

Weiss took in a few more breaths, getting used to the burning in her throat. Yang and Blake were beside her, but Ruby was nowhere to be seen. A seed of worry cropped up in Weiss’s thoughts, but she pushed it aside. _Ruby’s probably just getting Crescent Rose. She’ll help us out soon,_ she assured herself.

Before she realized it, Yang and Blake had taken off behind her, running down the train. She quickly saw what it was they were after; An enormous grimm was following the train and gaining ground quickly. It had a black, scaled body like a snake, but hundreds of thorny legs erupted from its long torso. It had a cluster of numerous eyes at the front of its body, over an oversized and fanged mouth. Some sort of centipede-ish grimm? Whatever it was, Weiss thought it was disgusting. It approached the rear of the train, despite the conductor putting it on full steam ahead. Its hundreds of legs hammered the landscape like thunder.

The beast opened its disgusting maw, approaching the rear of the train to try to grab on. Yang bent her knees, seeing this as an opportunity. The grimm made a lunge at the car Yang and Blake stood on, and Yang leapt, driving a powerful blow to the creature’s head, aided by the explosives of her gauntlets which propelled her back onto the train. The grimm reeled back, releasing a screech of pain, falling back a ways. The relent didn’t last long, though, as it pursued the train again with renewed vigor.

This time, the grimm approached from the side of the railway, its scaled body facing the team’s side. Blake tried to send suppressive fire at it from her guns, but the bullets ricocheted off its hide, and Yang was too far back to try to beat it away from the train again. It prepared to lunge several cars back from the rear, and the team braced themselves to be tossed aside as the train would crumple under an attack from its middle.

The charge never came, however. Instead, they heard the powerful shots of gunfire that they knew well. Blake, Weiss, and Yang’s eyes moved up the train to see Ruby kneeled, Crescent rose dug into the roof of the train to take shots at the creature. She was far enough forward that she could take shots at the creature’s cluster of eyes, and that caused it to flinch, deferring its attacks. Weiss had never been so happy to see Ruby, her hair and cape billowing heroically as the train carried her through the air. Ruby looked over to Weiss, and gave a smile and a wink.

Weiss nodded at Ruby. She stood up, facing the grim which was approaching again, raising Myrtenaster to her face as she flicked its dust chamber to red.

Blake, running forward, let loose a flurry of shots to the creature’s head, keeping it too preoccupied to move too far away from the team. As it turned towards them, Weiss jumped into the air and with a wide sweeping motion, a curtain of fire billowed out from Myrtenaster. The fire singed the grimm as it faded into thick smoke. Ruby, running towards the team, leapt over Weiss’s shoulders and through the smoke with Crescent Rose raised. She fell near the dazed creature’s neck, using her momentum to dig the scythe between the creature’s thick scales and swinging around to tear a patch of them away, exposing the pale blue flesh of the grimm.

Yang’s eyes widened as she saw the opportunity her sister opened for her. She dashed into the air, using the momentum from her fall to deliver a sharp, smashing hit to the creature’s newly exposed hide. This knocked the creature aside, its legs collapsing beneath its body as it tumbled to the ground, tearing up the earth beneath it. Blake threw her chains out to catch and pull Yang and Ruby back to the safety of the train. The groans of the creature behind them quickly faded with distance, and Weiss looked back to see that it had at least lost consciousness, laying in shambles not far from the track behind them.

All of them now stood safely back on the roof of the rear compartment of the train. They breathed heavily, catching their breath as the body of the grimm they beat back grew smaller with distance. Having their ears filled with the rapid, scattered steps of its legs, the world sounded incredibly peaceful and silent now, the rhythm of the train chugging along the only thing they could hear.


End file.
